The invention concerns a high nutritional value food in alternative to animal meat.
This is a Continuation-in-Part application of our previous application Ser. No. 09/230,545 filed on May 5, 1997 now abandoned.
Vegetable meat is composed of natural products based on gluten, cereal flour and legume flour.
This mixture enables a high percentage of protein to be used, which is concentrated in the gluten, minerals (especially iron), vitamins and the food fibers of cereals and legumes.
Its structure enables it to be used as food to be consumed cold to the flavor of mortadella, ham, bresaola, guanciale etc., or hot as steak, stew, mince, hamburger, sausage, pizzaiola, etc.
Other vegetable foods, with high nutritional value, know by the writer, are Seitan and soy by-products like soy steak and soy stew.
The latter are not finished like vegetable meat, because either they lack of same amino acids or food fibers. Moreover, they are unable to produce all types of meat mentioned above (mortadella, etc.).
A prior method of producing vegetable food products of a fibrous nature is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,886,298 (Hayes et al.). This method requires a step of preparing a mixture of protein material, such as gluten, and water to form a dough, which is then subjected to compression and heating within an extruder chamber, to obtain a product with a meat-like fibrous texture which can then possibly be rehydrated in boiling water.
How vegetable meat is made:
A percentage of gluten from 45% to 99.9% is mixed with a percentage of one or more cereal flours from 0.1% to 55%, or with a percentage of one or more legume flours from 0.1% to 55%, or with a percentage of one or more cereal and legume flours together from 0.1% to 55%.
This mixture is seasoned with various spices and after being kneaded and worked with water or vegetable broth, afterwards the pieces of required size are prepared and boiled for about two hours.
The list of cereals used for cereal flours is: hard grain, soft grain, buckwheat, kamut grain, oats, barley, pearl barley, maize, rye, spelt, rice.
The list of legumes used for legume flours is: chickpea, pea, broad bean, lentil, bean soya bean, chickling.
The kind of cereal or legume flours, which is used, can be wholemeal, fine, extra fine, bran.
The quality of gluten, cereal and legume flours used can be biological or non-biological. Vegetable meat comes in the form of a piece of meat such as a cylindrical shaped filet with rounded ends.
Its weight may be 0.5 kg., 1 kg., 2 kg., 3 kg., etc., in order to obtain this cylindrical shape, synthetic casings for salami or other forcemeat products may be used.
The list of seasonings used is: garlic, fennel seeds, rosemary, pistachio, paprika, black pepper, chili, salt, basil, parsley, extra pure olive oil, yeast extract, etc. The amount of water or vegetable broth for the flour dough is between 0.8 liters to 1 liter for every kilogram of flour mixture. The various kinds of vegetable meat named above (steak, stew, hamburger, mortadella, ham, etc.) are obtained by changing the percentages of gluten and of cereal and legume flours which have been used, also the different types of cereal and legume flowers (wholemeal, fine, extra fine, bran), and as well as the different types of spices used. The advantages of vegetable meat are the following:
1) It gives anyone not eating meat (vegetarians), anyone who cannot eat it because of cholesterol, uric acids, or digestive problems, the chance to have a complete alternative to animal meat (due to its nutritional value as well as to the range of different kinds of vegetable meat).
2) It can be kept in a fridge in a vacuum-sealed package for 30 days and frozen for 12 months.